Show Seconds in the Taskbar Clock

Have you ever wanted to see the seconds on your taskbar clock? You won’t find an option for this, but you can turn it on in Windows 10 with this trick.

Because this change is stored in your user profile, making this adjustment will not require administrative privileges and will only take effect for you. Any other users of the same machine that want the same will have to apply it for themselves.

The setting itself is controlled by a switch named “ShowSecondsInSystemClock” in the Explorer registry key. You can use Registry Editor to modify the value, but here’s a quick way to get the job done:

Search for “command prompt” , and open it up

Copy and paste the following command. This will set the seconds option switch value to “1” (on), then stop and restart the Explorer process so that the change is effective.

For easy copying, triple-click the above bold text to highlight the entire command. If needed after you run it, you can also press Ctrl-Shift-Escape to open Task Manager, then highlight the Windows Explorer process and restart it from there. In any case, the taskbar clock will show the seconds when it next loads and from now on.